To Örebro University

This is a study of dialect use, place-making, and metalinguistic practices in a vocational upper secondary school in the province of Värmland, located in the west-central part of Sweden. The study draws on linguistic-ethnographic fieldwork in four classes at three vocational programs: the Health and Social Care Program, the Electrical and Energy Program, and the Industrial Technology Program. The fieldwork spanned four semesters, including participant observation, audio recordings of eight focus students, and four focus group discussions. Drawing on sociolinguistic and social-semiotic perspectives, this study explores whether and how upper secondary students, aged 16–19, use dialect across different locations in the school, and how these locations are linguistically, socially, and semiotically constituted as meaningful places. The study also examines how students perceive and talk about language and place.

The study shows that students use dialect extensively across all recorded locations, and draw on a broad range of features, including both widely shared and traditionally more local variants. A thematic content analysis of discussions in four focus groups shows that the participating students display a broad range of metalinguistic perceptions and that they use language to signal belonging, create distinctions, and position themselves and others. The study also shows how students constitute different parts of the school as socially meaningful places, where various parts of the school are assigned distinct meanings and associated with particular activities, actors, histories, and qualities. Such meaningful places are then brought into action as practiced places through the interplay of spatial organization, social practice, and language use. The dissertation contributes to research on dialect use and place-making among adolescents in vocational and institutional settings, and to the understanding of how language use and spatial meaning-making are intertwined in everyday social practice.